{"id":4171,"date":"2003-04-02T12:16:32","date_gmt":"2003-04-02T12:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4171"},"modified":"2003-04-02T12:16:32","modified_gmt":"2003-04-02T12:16:32","slug":"the-evolution-of-deliberation-as-a-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4171","title":{"rendered":"the evolution of deliberation as a field"},"content":{"rendered":"

I made a presentation today at the Society<\/p>\n

for Values in Higher Education’s<\/a> conference at a beautiful rural retreat<\/p>\n

in northwestern Connecticut. This was my outline:<\/p>\n

Deliberation is a hot topic <\/b>in philosophy, law, and political<\/p>\n

science, generating shelves of books and articles. I believe that there<\/p>\n

are three reasons for this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Until the 1960s, many scholars assumed that politics was mostly a\n

    struggle among groups with fixed interests. Often, groups’ goals were<\/p>\n

    assumed to be selfish, although the really important point was that<\/p>\n

    they were inflexible. Therefore, discussion, argument, and reason-giving<\/p>\n

    were inconsequential. This was the Marxist view, but it was also the<\/p>\n

    view of "pluralists" and "realists" in political<\/p>\n

    science, many of whom were quite conservative. So it a broad ideological<\/p>\n

    spectrum agreed that rhetoric was politically insignificant. Politics<\/p>\n

    meant the deployment of power in competitive situations.<\/li>\n

    Then the power of argument, persuasion, and rhetoric was rediscovered.<\/p>\n

    But rhetoric is not always a good thing; people can be persuaded to<\/p>\n

    hate others against their self-interests. Conceivably, a society of<\/p>\n

    rational individuals who maximized their own interests would not be<\/p>\n

    racist, since racism is irrational. People are persuaded<\/i> to be<\/p>\n

    racists.<\/p>\n

    If persuasion is politically significant, but often harmful, then we<\/p>\n

    clearly need to figure out how to improve it. "Improved talk"<\/p>\n

    is a rough definition of "deliberation."<\/p>\n

  2. Until the 1960’s, the positivist distinction between facts and values\n

    held sway in English-speaking countries. Facts were testable and debatable;<\/p>\n

    values were just subjective matters of opinion. There was no debating<\/p>\n

    morality.<\/p>\n

    Then, around 1970, moral philosophy was revived, demonstrating that<\/p>\n

    there can be powerful, rational arguments for moral conclusions. However,<\/p>\n

    almost all contemporary political philosophers are democrats. They<\/p>\n

    do not believe that philosophers can decide what is right by sitting<\/p>\n

    in their studies and applying philosophical methods. This approach<\/p>\n

    would be undemocratic; it would also be foolish, since good decisions<\/p>\n

    require the input of many people with different backgrounds, values,<\/p>\n

    and experiences. <\/p>\n

    A belief in rational moral argument plus <\/i>a belief in democratic<\/p>\n

    participation yields <\/i>a commitment to deliberation.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. "Civil society"—an old term—suddenly became hugely\n

    influential in the 1980s and 1990s, for various reasons. Definitions<\/p>\n

    of "civil society" vary, but a core idea is that societies<\/p>\n

    form "public opinion" in nongovernmental groups such as clubs,<\/p>\n

    civic associations, newspapers, and political parties. This means that<\/p>\n

    no public opinion can form at all where civil society has been suppressed<\/p>\n

    or destroyed (e.g., in Iraq?). It also means that democracy depends<\/p>\n

    upon having a good institutional base for civil society. Thus there<\/p>\n

    has been a lot of research into what institutions support good discussions<\/p>\n

    and valuable public opinion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These three trends have led to a lot of research on two types of deliberation:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Deliberation in formal, decision-making bodies such as legislatures,\n

      official juries, and appeals courts. The research mostly asks: "Do<\/p>\n

      good arguments count in these fora?" and "How could we make<\/p>\n

      them count more?"<\/li>\n

    2. Society-wide deliberations occuring in civil society and the media,\n

      e.g., America’s discussion of gender-roles since the mid-1800s.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Meanwhile, there have been many interesting experiments that involve<\/p>\n

      actual citizen deliberations at modest scales outside of the government.<\/p>\n

      Many of the groups that promote such experiments are now gathered into<\/p>\n

      the<\/a><\/p>\n

      . Their work is influenced by the intellectual trends described above,<\/p>\n

      but it also continues an American tradition going back to the Chautauqua<\/p>\n

      Movement, the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement, etc.<\/p>\n

      These experiments have not been much studied. We need to ask: What is<\/p>\n

      the point of convening a group of citizens to discuss a public issue,<\/p>\n

      if the group is not a legislature or some other decision-making body?<\/p>\n

      What outcomes should we hope for from such experiments? Are they intrinsically<\/p>\n

      valuable, or only valuable as part of a movement that somehow "goes<\/p>\n

      to scale" or changes official institutions? What are the best ways<\/p>\n

      to structure citizens’ deliberations? And what makes them successful?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I made a presentation today at the Society for Values in Higher Education’s conference at a beautiful rural retreat in northwestern Connecticut. This was my outline: Deliberation is a hot topic in philosophy, law, and political science, generating shelves of books and articles. I believe that there are three reasons for this: Until the 1960s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}